


He has need of fire

by aesc



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Vikings, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:31:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years ago, Erik escaped from the slavers who had taken him captive--and would have died, if it hadn't been for a young Viking on his first voyage Eastward. Now, chilled nearly to death for a second time, he has a chance to reflect on better ways to go about revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He has need of fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Black_Betty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/gifts).



> For the lovely **black_betty** , who wanted something to do with very cold weather, someone being unprepared for said weather, and a bearskin rug. I hope you like it! ~
> 
> NB: I put in a tag for "Mildly Dubious Consent" because, even though there's no explicit sex, it's implied, and Erik's status in the relationship is not entirely clear. He's not precisely a slave, but circumstances dictate that he not be _free_ , either.
> 
> Most of Erik's references are from the Book of Samuel, Nahum, and the Song of Songs. Charles's (and the title) are from the Old Norse eddic poem _Hávamál_ , because he is a Viking. Everything inspired by McAvoy's brown hair and Viking-red beard and Tumblr conversations about it.

**He has need of fire**

The heat seared, pain burning life into toes and fingertips, and surely, he thought – surely the slavers had captured him, had thrown him into a fire and he was burning. Desperate, he reached for the steel that must be in their swords and knives, and found nothing, as if his gift had numbed fingers and metal slipped through them. He struggled, an animal struggling, mindless of everything except _escape_.

"You idiot!" said a voice from the inferno. A hand seized him by the arm, one of the places that had not been burned or frozen, and shook him. 

He knew the hand. It was not the bear-like appendage of Haimric or Lagan; although smaller, it had strength and will woven around its bones and tendons. Will enough to pull Erik back from death once, and twice now. It shook him mercilessly until Erik found a scrap of voice down beneath the layers of ice inside him and croaked, "Enough!"

"Not nearly," Charles said. Erik pried open his eyes and found darkness. He cried out when the darkness refused to lift, leaving him adrift in blurry hints of light and shadow.

"You're not blind!" Charles's hand returned to his arm, and all at once Erik felt a great surge of calmness roll through him, like winter breakers on the bay beating at a seawall. "Your eyes will be well, so long as you do not strain them. Snowblindness is common enough, and if you take care, it will pass."

"You said the same thing once about tolerance to cold," Erik grumbled, hating that he was being soothed but powerless to do anything about it. He let Charles push him back into the furs, into a warmth that calmed, now, instead of burning him down to charred bones.

"Such a southerner." Charles dabbed gently at Erik's closed eyes with a warm, soft cloth, moistened with herbs that also smelled warm. Their influence seemed to seep through the delicate skin of his eyelids, to penetrate the pupil and the tiny veins and tubules behind it. Charles said, eventually, "Now, open your eyes, but be careful about it."

This time the room was the room when Erik opened his eyes, the familiar things out of focus but familiar all the same. He saw the huge bear pelt on the floor before the fire – the fire some feet away, still too close for frostbitten limbs – and the racked weapons on one wall and the array of gold and silver treasures the Varangians brought to Charles as his due.

And, in the midst of it, shining more brightly than any treasure, was Charles, with his dark hair and absurdly red beard, his short frame bent nearly in two as he knelt by Erik's bed. Even in the gentle firelight, Charles's blue eyes glowed with a fierce life of their own. He wore, as Erik did, the Northmen's plain, heavy tunic and woolen undershirt, a heavy cloak over it. Erik saw the cloak had been patched with silk and fastened with a brooch of fantastic complexity, golden serpents bending around and devouring silver ones. He reached out with his abilities to trace them.

"Your _fylgja_ is always lovely," Charles said, in the strangely open, artless way he had.

For a moment, Erik saw his abilities as if through Charles's eyes: a magnificent raven, black-feathered with an eye of steel. He did not think of this gift of his – to sense metal, to manipulate it – as a creature separate from himself, but Charles seemed to. _Separate_ , Charles said with his own strange gift, speaking into Erik's soul where only G-d could see, _but inextricably bound – as the serpents in my brooch._

Erik thought of his researches into the Northmen, the paragraphs he had scribbled into his notebooks, words and words and words, now lost. _They have customs whereby divination and all things pertaining thereunto are the province of women, and I have myself seen many women claiming skill in foretelling the future, the crops, the sex of children. Men, they say, ought not to venture into these provinces, and men who do so chance being named weak or effeminate._

And yet: _They value foresight and practical thinking, and the ability to assess the character of friend and foe alike. Their lawspeakers, one man told me, are such that they can divine both the essence of the law and the essence of the men who come before it at trial or in disputes, so as to give the best and most equitable ruling._

"Where are we?" Erik asked. The furs and blankets beneath him felt familiar, and the trappings of the room he knew from the various encampments, when the fleet had stopped on its long trek northward to trade or rest.

"We," said Charles, "are in Holmgard. Winter quarters." He laid warm cloths across Erik's hands, tucking them around each of Erik's fingers. Erik bit his lip. Charles saw it and said nothing.

"Holmgard," Erik muttered. The word tasted strangely on his tongue, _Holmgarðr_ , with its emphatic consonants and oddly twisted vowels. He tried to remember what he'd learned of Charles's tongue; his memory seemed to be very far away. "The Island – "

"The Island Keep," Charles said in his atrociously accented Greek that Erik, finally fixed in the here and now, and with Charles's own abilities aiding as translator, could now understand. There had been no hope, when they'd first met, of teaching him Hebrew or Arabic; Charles had learned his Greek third-hand, from the warriors and traders who had journeyed between Byzantium and the north reaches. Even that strange communication of his, soul speaking to soul, and not worked until they better understood each other. "You thought you were _back then_."

"Yes." Erik shut his eyes again because it was easier. _Back then_ was two years ago, another winter, a sudden snowstorm and a long-looked-for chance for escape. And _back then_ was also Charles, a young man strayed from camp, stumbling across a Jew drowning in snow and ice. Charles said he had _heard_ Erik, a clamor of pain above the howling of the winds; Erik had forgotten almost all of it, but in moments found himself gripped by airlessness and the sense of _calling_ , of pulling something metallic to him.

"Only an idiot would run out into a blizzard," Charles said at last.

"Or a man who wanted revenge."

"That coin." Charles wasn't looking at him – strange, given his people's habit of staring very directly at anything that caught their interest, huge gazehounds catching the movement of their prey. Then again, Charles didn't need to; Erik felt the pressure of Charles's own gift, omniscience wrapped in a sturdy, but human, frame. "Your fylgja sensed it."

"I sensed it," Erik said. A shiver worked its way through him; it was not fear, he told himself. It certainly was not fear at being so exposed before this blue-eyed, fair-skinned barbarian, and it was not a ghost of the fear that had clasped itself around his heart when he had thought _I'm captured again, I've been taken –_ He imagined words in his head and made himself speak them. "I will find that man again, Charles, and end his life."

"You speak as if I don't know of revenge," Charles said steadily. He got up and began to undress, quickly and economically, the way Charles did many things. The firelight gilded a few strands in his hair and his beard, turning them to copper. "It's all well and good to die in pursuit of vengeance, but in general it's preferable to see your enemy's blood, and not your own."

"Have you?" Erik asked. He tore his gaze from Charles's pale back and the freckles that decorated it like the gold coins of a dragon's hoard. _Have you seen your enemy's blood?_

"I'm meant to be lawspeaker one day," Charles said, which was not an answer.

_They have one man in each region or district who is bound to memorize the law. He spends his youth in apprenticeship, learning their codes from the current lawgiver, and observing the ceremonies of the assembly, and becoming acquainted with the disputes and alliances of the families around them. At the assembly, he hears disputes and reminds the king or chieftain of the law, and the king makes his ruling._

Erik said. "I was meant to be a scholar."

"Yes, a _pater_ no, a father – a _rabbi_." Charles's tongue awkwardly embraced the word, fumbling from Greek to his own tongue to Hebrew. "You told me about your scrolls and your books, some of your rituals." Describing circumcision to Charles had been evilly amusing; showing him the results when Charles had refused to believe such a practice existed had burned Erik's blood more than he would have liked. "Do your laws say anything about vengeance?"

"This is beyond law," Erik said, and thought, but did not say, _The righteous man shall rejoice in vengeance._ "The scholars say revenge is pleasing to G-d when strict justice is required. When Saul spared Agag and the Amalekites, G-d rejected him as king, because Saul rejected his commandment. And the Prophet Samuel carried out what Saul would not." _And Samuel said unto Agag, 'As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.'_

Charles absorbed all of that silently and without surprise. "But I'm sure your books say something about _prudent_ vengeance."

"They do," Erik said gruffly. "What of it? I have no alliances, no comrades. If I die avenging my family, I lose only myself."

He got a scathing glare for that. Charles stepped out of his leggings, beautifully naked and as beautifully unself-conscious as an Adonis in a fresco – if, Erik, added, that Adonis wore a red beard and darkish hair tumbling out of its braids. A tattoo wove down one arm, dark ink in more of the serpent-work the Northmen prized. Charles bent to pick up his discarded clothes and put them in a trunk (the Northmen seemed to be particular about order, the tight discipline of their ships echoed on land), and heedless of the danger of sparks, prodded the fire into renewed life.

Erik's mouth ran dry and his blood ran hot, as if the sight of Charles more than the fire were burning life back into him. He held himself still as Charles moved through the flickering shadows, closer, closer.

Charles drew back the heavy furs and coverlets. Erik shivered as cold air slithered across him again and bit his lip, stared steadfastly up at the crossbeams of the house. Outside the wind howled, the blizzard beating its fists against the walls; Erik heard nothing other than the wind and the heavy thud of his heart knocking in his chest. Without ceremony, without any hint that he saw what churned through Erik's head, Charles climbed into the bed alongside him, and there he was, naked flesh pressed against Erik's own.

"Your scrolls and laws say that it's a… a _sin_ for men to lie together," Charles said, a quiet half-question. His breath sighed along Erik's collarbone, as potent and destructive as the storm outside. "But you lie with me."

"Laws say many things, men do many others." Erik stroked one bare shoulder, touching the raven's head capital of the tattoo. Charles's arm across his chest, his hand over Erik's thundering heart, held him securely as any shackle. "You want to enslave me like _he_ did, only you'd bind me differently."

"No," Charles said with the earnestness that never failed to entrance Erik and enrage him. "I _would_ like you to stay alive, though. And nearly falling through the ice on the lake makes that difficult." He stroked an absent pattern across Erik's chest. "You Southerners like to say we don't know how to reflect on our actions, that we're hasty, quick-tempered… but we prize restraint and rationality." Erik thought that one who ran out into a snowstorm after another wasn't much more intelligent than the man he'd gone to rescue; Charles, of course, overheard it and pinched him. "We say, _a man should be cautious and quiet when he enters a place, keep silent and listen closely_. And we say again, _a traveler far from home needs his wits about him_."

"And you're offering to be my _wit_?" Erik snorted. "You're a boy, barely off your farm, traveling for the first time – "

"I'm saying," Charles growled, "I can be your eyes. I can look ahead for you and see what you can't." He craned his head, peering up at Erik with eyes that were not like doves – that were like the fire trapped beneath blue glass. ( _Turn your eyes away from me, for they have overcome me_ , the poet had written.) "I can _hear_ what you can't, and I can get us where you could never go. You survived your road north, but what will you do when you get to the sea?"

In truth, Erik had never thought of allowing the slavers to make it that far, and he said as much. He sensed Charles's irritation rising up, threatening to swell into anger like a summer storm over the plains. "You'll still need to chase them upriver, and if you wish to catch them before they ship over to Sweden – and to catch them before you're caught yourself – you'll need a ship of your own."

"I – "

"Do you want vengeance," Charles rode over him, "or do you want to die?"

Erik swallowed against the knot tied in his throat; it was an intricate thing, as full of twists and turnings as the tattoo Charles wore. _What do you want?_ Charles's silent voice asked. _What is it, truly?_

" _Friends last long, if Fate is kind_." Charles was nearly atop him now, strong chest against Erik's chest; Erik felt the rumble of Charles's voice through layers of skin and muscle. "We're a practical people; we have to be. The world is dangerous for a man who has no friends and travels alone. Why should you waste your life and fail, when you could spend it wisely with me and live – and succeed?"

"And what would you ask in return?" Erik asked. He felt like a town surrounded by siege engines, battered on all sides, its defenses stripped to nothing. "That I stay with you and be your scholar? Your catamite?" He said this with all the scorn he could, with thoughts meant to remind Charles of Charles's age – younger, and so the proper object of the lust of an older man – and yet, _yet_ , his mind shivered in anticipation, desire trying to get the bit in its teeth. "What bondage would you place on me, then?"

"I'm going to Byzantium," Charles said after a moment. It felt like something Charles hadn't meant to say, that he had wanted to say something else instead. "When we find your slaver and kill him, I want you to accompany me south again. Teach me Greek if you want, or those scribbles you call your language, the ones I see in your head sometimes."

"So I'm to be your tutor," Erik snorted. "Aristotle to your Alexander?" Charles stared at him in bafflement. "And in exchange for _that_ , you'll let me go my way – back home, to Lebanon."

"If you want," Charles said, with the same reluctance that Erik already felt, stirring deep down. "We'll even take you there. Lagan hates being made to go out of his way, but the trading is good in Tyre. I can talk him 'round."

"Agreed."

"Good." Something strange and beautiful and golden rose up – relief, Erik realized, Charles's. It trembled in the air, a half-formed creature, before it dissipated and left only a young, half-wild man in Erik's arms, with serious blue eyes. "Then I don't have to worry about you running off again."

"I swear," Erik said. He meant to say it gruffly, but the truth still crept in, sharpening the words' soft edges. The smile Charles gave him was youthful and unfettered, unembarrassed at being so open, and Erik couldn't help but smile back.

"You're recovering," Charles said, touching the corners of Erik's mouth. _Your mouth is always so severe, except when you smile like this_. "There won't be frostbite, at least; you'll get to keep your fingers and toes again."

Erik said, "I still feel cold," which was true and not an invitation for more of Charles's liberties. The winter had settled down into his bones, just out of the reach of the fire and the furs and the blankets. Even Charles's warm body couldn't quite touch it. Still, though, he couldn't bring himself to move as the fingers at the corner of his mouth traveled to his eyes, to his neck, to his chest, and he settled back into the pillows as Charles leaned up into him, and let Charles's kisses burn the rest of him away.


End file.
